Doctypes help authors to add their information in a uniform way. This uniform way support the authors to concentrate on the content and not be distracted by formatting or coarse structuring issues. It also helps readers to find the information more quickly.

Teams should only write documentation that is essential and valueable

Templates are only a tool. If the information demands it, authors are free to add or adapt the templates to their needs. It is the ease of accessing information that counts, not the adherence to standards.

Please keep in mind to discuss deficiencies with your team members and documentation architects to continuously improve the documentation structure and tools.

We assembled some quotes according to documentation writing on the projectdoc homepage. Get inspired on how to design your project documentation!

Doctypes are implemented as page blueprints, which Confluence allows to adjust to your needs. Teams should decide what elements are worthy to use and which should be discarded. After all there must be a return of investment and every asset, which includes documents, is also a (potential) liability.

Create a Space

To get started with the Core Doctypes, we recommend to create an Agile Documentation Space.

This provides the basic structure to add new documents easily by the use of home and index pages. This is how the space looks like:

List of Space Blueprints

Addressbook Space

Manage information about people and their roles and interests in a product or project. This space contains information about roles, persons, and organizations.

Glossary Space

Manage information about a domain. Add glossary items and associate them with domain information.

Index Space

Collect commonly used information like spaces properties or type documents. You may also include fragments to be used by transclusion or other information that is relevant for all dependent spaces.

Library Space

Manage information about resources. This includes books, articles, podcasts, as well as information about the authors of these resources.

Main Space

Create a space to organize information for your agile team. Combine single-sourced modules with dynamic lists and transclusion to support collaboration.

Topic Space

Create a space to collect and organize information on a topic.

Workspace Space

Create a space to collaboratively collect information on a specific topic. A workspace does not demand for updating information. It is a place to work with until a goal is reached. Move the result of your research to topic spaces and discard or archive this space.

Provides information about a person. This includes contact information (important if the person is relevant for the team) or information about the competences (if the person is an author about a topic relevant for the project).

Sections of a document are typically part of a document. But the size of sections may vary. To support a team to write collaboratively on the documentation, a larger document may be subdivided into external section documents.

A description of a given topic. A topic may describing or explaining a concept, a task to accomplish or a reference. There are a couple of topic types that set the expectations for the reader. Instances of the topic doctype usually have independent lifetimes from any referencing documents.

Extension Doctypes

The following doctypes are not part of the Core Doctypes Add-on, but are (or will soon be) available in separate packages.

Separate add-ons make it easy for teams to select those doctypes that are useful for them and their specific project requirements.

Please make sure to check those extension doctypes. Maybe they are not provide exactly to what you require, but they can be a good starting point.

For minor changes Confluence allows to adjust the templates easily. For larger changes we recommend to create a blueprint project and build your own add-on. If you have developers on your team, this may be much easier than you think. Please refer to Tour for Template Authors for an overview on how to do this. We plan to release some of our doctype projects on GitHub to make you get started with your own add-on extensions more quickly.

Provides doctypes to create documentation in software development projects. The focus is on documenting the architecture of the product, but it includes templates for other software development documentation requirements as well.

Provides doctypes to collborate with your team. Run iterations and record discoveries that may be of interest at the end of the iteration or for even later reference. Quick notes are more easily added as records to the team's space than to the official documentation tree. Defer the talk to the documentation architect to the end of the iteration (if the discovery is still of interest).

Provides doctypes to define the checklists, processes, patterns, tools, and rules your team agrees upon. Writing them down makes them accessible for anyone - especially for new team members. Keep these documents short and to the point!

Resources

Document types (or doctypes for short) define a set of properties and sections. Each doctype matches at least one Confluence Page Blueprint. Confluence Page Blueprints are a collection of templates, but often the collection contains only one element.